Food products that contain discrete pieces of edible material (hereinafter referred to as "morsels") are well known in the art. Examples include cookies, cakes, and pastries containing chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, nutmeats, bits of fruit such as raisins, and candies such as M&M's.RTM. or Reeses Pieces.RTM..
Most high-speed manufacturing methods of making various types of morsel-containing baked food products such as a ready-to-serve chocolate chip cookies typically include the steps of continuously forming a dough rope having morsels randomly-distributed therein, cutting or slicing the dough rope into individual pieces (hereinafter referred to as "dough preforms" or simply "preforms"), and finally baking the dough preforms to preduce individual ready-to-serve cookies. Unfortunately, when such methods are used, the vast majority of the morsels contained within the cookies are not visible upon a casual inspection of the cookies' outer surface. While this is not a serious problem, it has been found that consumers generally prefer a morsel-containing baked product to exhibit a high degree of "morsel show," or in the case of a chocolate chip cookie, a high degree of "chip show."
One possible way of increasing morsel visibility in a baked food product made in a manner as described above would be to sprinkle additional morsels on the dough preform's outer surface prior to baking. However, depending on the degree of tackiness exhibited by the preform's outer surface, most of the morsels would fall off the preform either prior to or during the baking step, thereby creating waste and increasing costs. In addition, the sprinkled-on morsels would tend to melt or "bleed" all over the cookie's outer surface when baked, thereby significantly detracting from the cookie's appearance. On the other hand, such a proposal might be practical if the morsels were somehow pressed into the preform from the outside in before baking, but that would add yet another manipulative, time-consuming step to the process, thereby increasing costs. In addition, such manipulation would severely distort the preform and, ultimately, the final baked product.
High morsel visibility is also generally desirable in the new laminated form of ready-to-serve cookies, examples of which are disclosed in the revolutionary teachings of commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 4,455,333, which is hereby incorporated herein by reference. The Hong and Brabbs cookie can be made by, for example, coextruding an inner dough with one or more outer doughs to form a laminated dough preform which, when baked, has different textures and degrees of sugar crystallization. One way of increasing morsel-show on a Hong and Brabbs cookie would be to include randomly-distributed morsels in the cookie's outer dough layer. However, in light of the outer dough's relative thinness and the corresponding coextrusion nozzle's inner dimension limitations, only relatively small morsels could be included in the outer dough layer. Since it has been found that consumers generally prefer much larger morsels, such a solution is not optimal.
In light of the above, the principal object of the present invention is to provide a high-speed manufacturing method of producing various types of baked food products that exhibit a high degree of morsel visibility.
Another principal object of the present invention is to provide a high-speed manufacturing apparatus for producing various types of baked food products that exhibits a high degree of morsel visiblity.
Yet another principal object of the present invention is to provide a high-speed manufacturing method of making various types of dough preforms which when subsequently baked by, for example, a consumer at home in a conventional oven, produce baked food products that exhibit a high degree of morsel visibility.
Another principal object of the present invention is to provide a high-speed manufacturing apparatus for making various types of dough preforms which when subsequently baked by, for example, a consumer at home in a conventional oven, produce baked food products that exhibit a high degree of morsel visibility.